Yup, I just made that an awards ceremony speech in 3 seconds! Thanks for coming! I’m off the stage before the music starts!

And…I gave my first sermon in Big Church! It was fun! I don’t remember much of the actual talking part but that always happens when I preach! Anyone else have that? My parents and my in law parents came which was super cool. I stood in a really, really, tall pulpit which was a little scary but it was great to look down and see their smiling faces! Although I couldn’t look for more than a second or I got distracted and lost my train of thought!

I also finished my last paper and had my last final today! My professor came to class and watched me teach the cute little 2-5 year olds creative jazz movement class today. It’s one of my favorite classes and today was the performance day so there was a lot going on but I think it went great!

Now for summer, do you have any fun plans? I’m still deciding on mine. Summer school? We’ll see if I can get off the wait list and into the class. Work? Definitely!

This is the first summer in years that I won’t be going to youth summer camp and I am totally bummed. My students have very busy schedules and have never been to camp so they don’t know what they’re missing. I know I’m like the only youth pastor on the planet who loves going to summer camp so I would gladly trade with anyone who is dreading it! Just tell me when to get on the bus!

I’ve been brainstorming ideas for fun stuff to do this summer with my youth group and but I haven’t landed on anything yet. My biggest struggle is numbers, who’s isn’t I guess. But I mean, no one shows up when I plan stuff. That’s a pretty big downer and makes it hard to plan future things. I know it’s not me (hard to remember); it’s the group of students, circumstances and history of their church life that is working against me, but it’s hard not to take it personally sometimes. As my amazing head Pastors say, “I am planting seeds. I may never see the harvest, but my job is to plant them, so do it diligently.” Wonderful advice, beautiful metaphor, so hard to live out. It gets discouraging.